Only once, and only for a moment, was Jess nearly separated from Georgia, as they were nearing The Manor for the grand finale, when someone stepped out from behind a bush （‘Quickly! This way! We must hurry!’） and laid a hand on Jess’s forearm and tried to steer her and two or three of the people from their group off in a different direction, the wrong direction. Jess had only managed to break away and catch up with the others by ignoring the cast member, literally tugging her arm out of their grip, ignoring their calls as she forged off after the others, in pursuit of Georgia’s departing back.
And now here they all were, gathered on the main lawn again, torches glimmering through the trees as, group by group, the audience were led back to where they had started, the wind setting the flames in the braziers jumping and skipping. The tragic masks looked more mournful than ever. The grins on the comic masks appeared maniacal and mocking.
Through the windows of the ballroom, the dim glow of candlelight was visible; through the ballroom’s open doors the sound of instruments being tuned could be heard. Then they were all ushered up the stone steps from the lawn to the broad balustraded terrace and, from there, directed into the ballroom. There, a dozen musicians in evening dress and half-masks occupied one corner, while a group of dancers all in cotton shifts or their shirtsleeves, all shoeless, all utterly expressionless, stood frozen in the centre of the room – and she found herself （at last） right next to Georgia Crane, so close that she could have reached out and touched her, so close that when she muttered something it was only Georgia who turned around.
‘I’m sorry?’
Their eyes met. Impossible to tell what expression was on Georgia’s face, beneath that grinning mask. Her voice – that familiar, unmistakable voice – had sounded genuinely puzzled, genuinely confused.
Jess repeated herself.
‘Murderers,’ she said.
No doubt under other circumstances Georgia would have moved away, would have made a fuss. For a moment, it was clear, she was wondering whether this was part of the performance. When she did take a discreet step back, away from Jess, she collided immediately with the person behind her, who shifted foot to foot and could be seen applying a little shoulder pressure back.
Jess leaned in even closer – until the foreheads of their masks were almost touching – and said it again, a third time.
It was the truth. Georgia and Jackson Crane had murdered Jess’s parents. One of her parents quickly, one of them slowly. They had murdered her parents and then they had driven back to Country Home, and he had wept and shouted and drunk himself into a stupor, while she had made and received phone calls and paced the room, her dark hair swinging. Calling who? Receiving calls from whom? Their lawyers? Their agents? Some kind of fixer?
Because neither of them had called the police. Neither of them had called an ambulance. Neither of them had even bothered to look and see if there was anyone else in that car. A little girl with barely a scratch on her by some miracle, hanging upside down in her seatbelt for hours and hours, talking to her parents and not getting any answer, in the freezing cold, screaming, crying, terrified, distraught. And when you watched that video, that footage on the memory stick, there was a whole hour, just over an hour – you could see the timer jump in the bottom of the screen, from 02.15 to 03.21 – when the woman in that room disappeared off to do something, or have a shower, or perhaps just change her clothes, because she was in a different outfit when she returned. And Jess found herself thinking that even then if she – Georgia – had alerted the authorities then, told someone what had happened, even anonymously, they still might have been able to do something to try to save her father, and her mother might not have spent the rest of her life in a coma. There had been moments, growing up, when Jess had found herself wondering if Georgia was a victim too. What she had seen this afternoon banished that suspicion for good. It had been more and more frustrating, each time she had watched the video, how little actual footage of Georgia there was, how she always seemed to be captured from behind or speaking from just out of shot, how you never got a clear view of her face or her expression. But even so, even in all that footage, there was not one moment at which she could be seen or heard expressing any concern about the people in the car, any remorse for what she and Jackson had caused, any worry about anyone other than the two of them in that room.